Severed(13)

‘Why did you give me the knife?' Evie asked in a voice that didn't sound like her own.

The smile that had been threatening to vanish grew bolder. ‘Why d'you think?' Issa answered.

Evie didn't respond.

‘I did it to make you who you were meant to be, Evie. And believe me, things will work out better this way.'

Evie let the words sink in and then frowned at Issa, shaking her head. ‘How did you know I'd do it?'

‘I'm a Sybll,' Issa answered. ‘I saw it.'

Evie stared into the two pale-blue abysses in front of her. Had Issa seen the future, or had she created it? There was a difference. A big difference.

Evie opened her mouth to ask her, but Issa had already turned away. ‘Time to go,' she announced, stepping over the dead Scorpio's tail and heading towards the stairs.

Flic and Jamieson followed her without a word. Evie watched them all disappear through the fire exit, only Jamieson turning and lifting his hand in farewell.






     
 

      Chapter 15



Lucas walked straight to Jules's body, rolled it over with the tip of his boot and then crouched down beside it. Evie watched him, with the continuing sensation that a plasma screen divided them and that this wasn't happening in real life but in some alternative universe that she was observing on celluloid. The sounds around her were amplified, as if coming at her from speakers set into the corners of the warehouse. The colour of the blood pooling at Lucas's feet was brighter than blood ought to be, as though someone had mixed additives it. She could smell it from here, a rotting meat smell that smacked the back of her nose. She gagged and then vomited onto the ground, narrowly missing emptying the contents of her stomach onto the smouldering remains of a Thirster.

She wiped the back of her hand against her mouth and lifted her head. Lucas had one knee on the chest of the Scorpio and was twisting the hilt of his blade trying to pull it free. She heard the cracking snap of a bone breaking and then a squelching, sucking noise as Lucas yanked the blade out.

He paused to wipe the worst of the blood off on the side of the Scorpio's sleeve and then he stayed crouching as the body vanished, leaving just the pool of blood it had been lying in as evidence that it had ever been there in the first place. She had seen this happen before  –  unhuman bodies disappearing right in front of her eyes  –  but she still blinked in disbelief. One minute there. One minute gone. It was so neat. All evidence of what she'd done removed. Except for the blood. And the knife Lucas was holding. And the image indelibly stamped on her mind of the Scorpio's face as the knife sliced its way through his shirt, through skin and bone, and plunged straight into his heart.

Lucas stood slowly and turned to Evie, and she felt the air suck out of her own chest as if he'd just pulled the knife from her body. His expression was furious. His mouth, usually soft even when he was sad, was drawn into a long hard line. His eyes were blazing with anger. She felt a rage of her own flare in response, though it was instantly muted by the voice in her head that was screaming at her about what she had just done. What had she done? She tried not to let her gaze fall back to the floor, to the pool of blood that she could see out of the corner of her eye. She kept her gaze firmly on Lucas instead. Why was he looking at her like that? It wasn't as if she'd had any choice  –  or had she?

Her heart was now beating in her mouth. She could feel it  –  a solid object, pulsing thickly against her tongue. And her skin felt as if it had been coated in metallic paint. The air around her was charged as if a storm was about to break, making her skin tingle and itch.

Her head flew up at the same time as Lucas's, both of them turning towards the stairs. Without thinking, Evie moved, so astonished at her own speed that she stumbled to a standstill, her arms flying out to balance herself. The doors at the top of the stairs burst open and the rogue Hunters appeared.

In that first second she took in all three of them  –  their height, weight and clothes, what weapons they were holding and what weapons they were carrying concealed. She clocked the girl as the one to watch, the boy at the front as the leader and the boy standing just behind him as an expert in hand-to-hand combat.

The three of them stood on the landing, their eyes flickering over the scene below, taking it in as quickly as Evie had taken in them. Then, as one, their eyes flew back to her and Lucas, who had stepped out from her shadow and was standing beside her, his blade at his side.

The one at the front, the one Evie had marked as the leader, strode forwards and rested his hands on the balcony in front of him. ‘Six dead Thirsters,' he said, his voice carrying easily across the empty warehouse. ‘From the looks of it, two dead Scorpio. And the two most wanted people in the realms. This is a pleasant, yet unexpected, surprise.'

Evie looked up at him, studying him properly. He was in his early twenties, she guessed, maybe younger, well built, definitely well trained by the look of his arms under the close-fitting white T-shirt he was wearing. He had brown hair streaked with blonde and it was tousled  –  but carefully; he'd probably had to use a protractor to angle all the tufts that perfectly. Evie made a mental note to throw a lighter at his head in the event of any falling out. With that amount of product in his hair he'd undoubtedly go up in a big ball of flames. Before either she or Lucas could answer, he was suddenly on the stairs, halfway down them, heading straight towards her and Lucas. The other two were hot on his heels, fanning out as they hit the last step so that they formed a triangle around them.

The leader stopped in front of Evie, examining her as if she were some prize animal at a barn-raising, about to be taken off to slaughter. His gaze flitted over her body, weighing her, assessing her in a way that made her feel he wasn't only checking her for weapons. Then he looked up. His eyes were the first thing she noticed. They were deep-set. Green-blue in colour, with a slash of brown cutting across the iris of the left one.

‘Interesting place for a date,' he said. ‘Don't you two have some balcony in Verona to be hanging out on?'

‘We were trying to get your attention,' Evie said, by way of explanation. ‘We needed to find you.'

‘Well, you found me,' the one in charge said, stretching his arms out wide. ‘Here I am, baby. I'm all yours.'

Evie felt her nostrils flare in response.

‘What's the matter?' he asked, coming closer until his chest was filling her field of vision. Evie held her ground, refusing to step back, tipping her chin up instead. She found herself staring at his jaw. It was blunt, what some people  –  her mother for example  –  would call chiselled.

'You don't like the familiarity?' he asked, stepping backwards so he could see her properly, or maybe he just wanted to give her the chance to check him out properly. ‘How about Evie  –  or just plain Ev? No?' he said, taking in her glowering stare. ‘Cupcake?' He smiled mockingly and then sidestepped swiftly so he was standing in front of Lucas. ‘And you, what do we call you? Lucas, Luke, Lukey-baby? Dead unhuman walking?'

‘You can call me anything you like,' Lucas responded evenly. ‘Just depends if you want me to answer. Or if you want me to finish wiping off the blood on this blade using the inside of your throat.'

The leader turned his head sideways to look at Evie, his expression puzzled. ‘Friendly guy  –  you actually dig this?' he asked, jabbing his thumb at Lucas. ‘For real?' He shook his head in amazement but stepped back nevertheless and started studying her again, more carefully this time.

Evie felt her impatience growing. Her eyes slid downwards. Two could play this game. He was wearing scuffed-up jeans she noted, but brand new sneakers and had a tattoo on the inside of his wrist, though she couldn't quite make out what it was of. He was an inch or so shy of Lucas in height and maybe a few pounds heavier, though all muscle, testified by the ridges of his stomach, clearly outlined through his T-shirt. He bore several scars  –  one visible on his neck that looked like it could be a Thirster bite, another on his forearm that looked like a Mixen burn. She recognised it because she had a similar scar on her own arm in the shape of a hand. There was a battered leather sheath on his waist, the hilt of a knife visible, but otherwise no other weapons.

‘You seem to know all about us,' she said, raising her eyes and forcing herself to look indifferent. ‘So are you going to bother introducing yourself?'

‘We're the rogue Hunters,' he said, flashing her a smile.

She arched an eyebrow. ‘Is that what it says on your driver's licence?'

The boy on her right snorted through his nose.

The leader tipped his head to one side, his eyes narrowing, but the smile remained on his lips. 'I'm Cyrus,' he finally said. ‘This,' he indicated the girl on his left, ‘is Vero.'

Evie glanced over. The girl was short and slight, with a shock of black hair sticking straight up on her head, shorn at the sides. She was wearing a floral dress with a lace frill, a studded collar, and fourteen-hole Doc Marten boots with bright green laces. Evie frowned. There was something weirdly, disturbingly familiar about her. She tried to think what but her focus was distracted all of a sudden by the shiny silver thing poking over the girl's shoulder, which at first sight she'd thought was a rucksack. Evie now realised with a start that it was in fact a sword. A scimitar to be precise  –  the word slinging itself unannounced into Evie's brain. It had a curved blade and a long handle, had probably been forged during the Crusades and looked to weigh more than the girl herself did. Evie glanced at the girl again, more nervously this time. The girl was glaring back at her, her tiny white teeth bared. Now, that was familiar too  –  where had she  … ?